Ohtani being cleared by MLB is like covid being declared zoonotic by the NIH and CDC. No way they were going to investigate seriously the biggest international star in the history of the sport no matter how obvious it is that a bookie would never extend millions in credit to his interpreter.
I’m fine with it — I really don’t care if Ohtani gambles, but the premise they were investigating him is a joke.
Disappointing to see the GOAT Djokovic have to drop out with a knee injury. But this is how it more or less goes for everyone as they get old. I actually think to a large extent it’s not that people lose their skills so much as the amount of work it takes to stay healthy and recover from repetitive stress and injuries becomes insurmountable.
Jerry Rice played WR into his 40s only because he was such a maniac at training, but even he got got by Father Time.
My fantasy baseball teams are crushed by injuries. High stakes team lost its top pitcher (hamstring), second pitcher (TJ surgery), top closer (oblique), third pitcher (hamstring), seventh and eighth pitchers.
Also top hitter (hamstring) and a few others. It’s only June 2.
Baseball is not supposed to be as hazardous as NFL, but seems like it.
Some assorted thoughts about what’s going on in sports:
- In the NFBC Main Event, most people wanted 1.1 or 1.2 to get Ronald Acuna or Spencer Strider. Now those teams are largely drawing dead. It feels like injuries in baseball are as prevalent as in football now.
- Good news for the Braves is every time Acuna tears an ACL they win the World Series.
- Imagine bullding your fantasy team around Esteury Ruiz’s steals. DOA from Opening Day. (I shouldn’t talk after building my Main Event in part around Trea Turner and Jackson Chourio.)
- Elly De La Cruz has nine homers and 31 steals, and it’s still May. He also has 72 strikeouts, and his average has sunk to .254. Everyone can now claim to be right about him.
- Last year, league ERA was 4.33, this year, 3.97, same as 2022. And that’s despite Spencer Strider and Gerrit Cole, the top-two starters by ADP, being out (though two players would only move the needle very slightly.) I don’t know if it’s the pitchers getting used to the pitch clock after an adjustment year or more tinkering with the baseballs. I hope it’s the former because I’m sick of the run environment being created by fiat.
- I expect Corbin Carroll to be fine. Jose Ramirez, peak Derek Jeter and peak David Ortiz all had years where they were hitting around .200 into June and turned it around. Unless his shoulder is the issue, but he’s playing every day, and if it were, I imagine they would have rested him more.
- Corey Seager was off to a slow start, but now he’s hitting a HR every day. For hitters like him and Yordan Alvarez the *only* ingredients you ever need are health and time. The worst is when a guy is off to a slow start, then gets hurt before he can make up for it. Knock on wood.
- Julio Rodriguez is heating up, but so far the only right answer to an early pick was Bobby Witt. (Most people took Kyle Tucker, Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts mid-first.)
- Jurickson Profar might set the record for “post” in a post-hype breakout.
- Freddie Freeman (5 HR, 1 SB) might be aging (Mark) Gracefully.
- Someone has Chris Sale, Ranger Suarez and Shota Imanaga on a roster. Garrett Crochet, Luis Gil, Clarke Schmidt, Jarred Jones, Jack Flaherty, Tanner Houck and Seth Lugo were also dirt cheap. So far it looks like this was the year to load up on hitting and gamble.
- I faded Jose Ramirez because I thought the team context might hurt his counting stats, and now he’s leading the league by a mile with 54 RBI in May despite batting only .266.
- Luka Doncic and Nikola Jokic show (to my great surprise) you can be fat and white and still dominate in the NBA.
- I just can’t care about the NFL or fantasy football until at least late June. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, let me have some absence from it, FFS.
- Mike Tyson has about 60 seconds to knock out Jake Paul, or he’s toast. Not saying he won’t do it, but at 57, he won’t last long.
- The dust-up about Harrison Butker is ridiculous. Teams need to stop caring what players think or say off the job, and if fans bitch, tell them to take it up with someone who cares. That Trevor Bauer doesn’t have a job, and that people defend this by saying, “no one wants the headache” as though a headache is reason to set a precedent where fans can dictate what a player can and cannot say at penalty of losing his career is short-sighted in the extreme. And don’t pretend Bauer is being punished for what he did rather than who he is — he was not even criminally charged, and his accuser admitted to extorting him while players who are guilty of domestic abuse served shorter suspensions and are playing. While Colin Kaepernick protested on company time, his blackballing for that, rather than just a fine, was really the modern precedent that set this off. That’s why you should be for free expression you don’t agree with because once they start down that road, there’s no stopping it.
(paywall), you’ll see a convincing case that the baseball is deader this year, not leaving the park as often, explains the low run-scoring environment.
Seems like injuries to key players are up too, but maybe that’s just my teams.
